A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

As soon as he mentioned Mr. Romaine a flood of light burst upon Letty. “Isn’t he a Virginian?—an American, I mean? And didn’t grandpapa know him hundreds of years ago?” she asked, eagerly.

“I have heard he was born in Virginia, as poor Chessingham knows to his cost,” answered Sir Archy, laughing quietly. “After having gone all over Europe, Asia, and Africa, the old hunks at last made up his mind that he would come back to America. Chess was very well pleased, particularly as Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood were invited to come as his guests. But old Romaine swears he means to take the whole party back to Virginia to his old place there that he hasn’t seen for forty years, and naturally they’ll find it dull.”

Sir Archy possessed in perfection that appalling English frankness which puts to shame the characteristic American caution. But Sir Archy’s mistake was Farebrother’s opportunity.

“Deuced odd mistake, finding Virginia dull,” remarked that arch hypocrite, at which Letty rewarded him with a brilliant smile.

Sir Archy had got his permission by that time, and he went across the grass to his friends and brought them up.

The two English women looked at Letty with calmly inquisitive eyes full of frank admiration. Letty, with a side-look and an air of extreme modesty, took them from the top of their dainty heads to the soles of their ugly shoes at one single swift glance. Then Mr. Chessingham was presented, and last, Mr. Romaine. Mr. Romaine gave the impression of looking through people when he looked at them and nailing them to the wall with his glance. And Letty was no exception to the rule. He fixed his black eyes on her, and said in a peculiarly soft, smooth voice: “Your name, my dear young lady, is extremely familiar to me. Archibald Corbin and his brothers were known to me well in my youth at Shrewsbury plantation.”

“Mr. Archibald Corbin is my grandfather, and he has spoken often of you,” replied Letty, gazing with all her eyes.

This then was Mr. Romaine, the eccentric, the gifted Mr. Romaine, of whose career vague rumors had reached the quiet Virginia country neighborhood which he had left so long ago. Far back in the dark ages, about 1835, when Colonel Corbin had made a memorable trip in a sailing-vessel to Europe, Mr. Romaine had been an attaché of the American legation in London; he had resigned that appointment, but he seemed to have taken a disgust to his native country, and had never returned to it. And Letty had a dim impression of having heard that Miss Jemima in her youth had had a slight weakness for the handsome Romaine. But it was so far in the distant past as to be quite shadowy. There was a superstition afloat that Mr. Romaine had made an enormous fortune in some way, and his conduct about Shrewsbury certainly indicated it. The place had been farmed on shares for a generation back, and the profits paid the taxes, and no more. But the house, which was a fine old mansion, had never been suffered to fall into decay, and was kept in a state of repair little short of marvelous in Virginia. Nobody was permitted to live in it, and at intervals of ten years the report would be started that Mr. Romaine intended returning to Shrewsbury. But nothing of the sort had been said for a long time now, and meanwhile Mr. Romaine was on the American side, and nobody in his native county had heard a word of it.

“And Miss Jemima Corbin,” said Mr. Romaine, a faint smile wrinkling the fine lines about his mouth. “When I knew her she was a very pretty young lady; there have been a great many pretty young ladies in the Corbin family,” he added, with old-fashioned gallantry.

“Aunt Jemima is still Miss Corbin,” answered Letty, also smiling. “She never could find a man so good as my grandfather, ‘brother Archibald,’ as she calls him, and so she would not have any at all.”